Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean character started life as the star of a
series of short films. Created by Atkinson and writer Richard Curtis,
Bean-the man is surpassingly weird-acts so bizarre that he's compelling
to watch as, sometimes by prank and sometimes by sheer accident, he
wreaks havoc on his surroundings. In 'Bean,' the odd little klutz has a
job at a British art museum, which involves sitting and doing nothing.
Bean's employers are so desperate to get rid of their human disaster
area that, seeing an opportunity to get rid of him at least
temporarily, they pass him off as an art expert and ship him off to
America. Bean doesn't even make it out of the airport before he begins
to make his U.S. host's life utter hell.

It's ironic that 'Bean,' one of the few DVDs to commendably feature
close-captioning for the hearing-impaired, functions almost as silent
slapstick. The visual humor is somewhat evenly divided between
Atkinson's unique style of physical comedy-there's not another
character anywhere who moves exactly like Mr. Bean, and Atkinson makes
each feature of his face seem capable of independent action-and sheer
grossness, with the gonzo turkey-stuffing scene in Chapter 7 as one of
the milder examples. If there was ever a movie that could survive
without language, this is it. (Though fans of verbal wit can forward up
to Chapter 12 in order to hear a wonderfully blunt bit of art
criticism.)

The look of 'Bean' is intentionally on the garish side. The best sights
and sounds can probably be found in Chapter 6, when Bean sabotages a
thrill ride. The film relies more on its gags than its (perfectly
competent) technical aspects. Screenwriters Richard Curtis and Robin
Driscoll are inventive and director Mel Smith shoots the jokes for
maximum impact, but 'Bean' often feels like a series of sketches strung
together thematically, rather than a narrative with a through-line. For
Bean-philes, the film will be pure joy, for others, it may be like
watching a marathon of comedy shorts packed too closely together. In
this respect, seeing 'Bean' on DVD has a great advantage to watching it
in a theater; viewers can stop when they've had enough for one sitting
and return when they're ready for more instead of having to overdose by
seeing it all at once.